Threat of A Stolen Election

GOP Threat of Another Stolen Election Prompts Lawsuit in Ohio

Interview with author and professor of media and culture Mark Crispin Miller, conducted by Scott Harris 24 October 2008

Ever since the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida — the winner of which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court — the integrity of American elections has been in doubt. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which allocated millions of dollars for the purchase of electronic voting machines, which came with privatized software systems and vulnerability to manipulation, creating another set of problems and mistrust.

The Help America Vote Act also asked states to remove the names of voters who have died, moved out of state or no longer qualify to vote. BBC-TV investigative reporter Greg Palast, who first reported the illegal purging of voters in Florida prior to the 2000 election, has been raising the alarm about a similar pattern of voter purges in key battleground states in advance of this year’s presidential ballot. Now, the New York Times has picked up the story and recently confirmed that tens of thousands of voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law. Because of the Democratic Party’s success at registering hundreds of thousands of new voters this year, the culling of the voting rolls will disproportionately affect voters backing Barack Obama.

Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, is the editor of a new book titled, “Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy 2000-2008.” Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Miller about the evidence he says suggests that a concerted effort is being made by the Republican Party to change the outcome of this November’s election, including efforts possibly now underway, to steal the election by rigging the electronic vote.

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: The Republicans are necessarily resorting to a dizzying range of tactics. Some of them legal, many of them illegal, to do two things basically. On the one hand, they’re working very, very hard at vote suppression and that’s a category of activities that’s familiar to anyone who’s paid any attention to American history. It’s the kind of thing that goes back to the days of Jim Crow. We’re talking about new laws that have been passed to require voters to bring certain kinds of documents to the polls.

We’re talking about major efforts to interfere with registration drives. We’re talking about a kind of national orgy of voter purging — that is, the names of voters are being purged from the rolls in state after state after state. And this category of activity also includes disinformation; sending people to the wrong polling place; intimidating them with threats that if they show up to vote, they’ll be arrested because they have fallen behind in their child support payments or they have outstanding parking tickets. I could talk to you for the next half-hour just about scams like these. So that’s going on all over the place. And at the same time — and this is a category of activity that gets much less attention because it’s still controversial at least to the corporate media — and that is: the apparatus is in place for more election fraud.

This refers not to shrinking the size of the electorate before Election Day and keeping people out of the polls, this refers to basically fixing the numbers electronically after the fact, that is after people have voted. And this involves the use of electronic voting systems, which now basically will account for between 85 and 90 percent of the votes cast in this country.

I started out by saying the Republicans are doing this necessarily because it seems to me that they can’t win this race in any other way. I think the polls by now have made quite clear — and I’ve discussed this with a number of my friends in the polling business — that McCain is toast and indeed, the Republican party would be finished, I think, if it weren’t for election fraud. I think the Republican party actually would have been finished a couple of years ago if it weren’t for election fraud.

So my main concern at the moment is that there be as large a turnout as possible, because the larger the turnout, the harder it is to steal an election. And I’m also eager to see this be the most vigilantly monitored election that we’ve ever had. And the good news is that there’s every indication that on the one hand, the turnout will be very big, and on the other hand, that people will indeed be very carefully monitoring the race.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Mark, as you said before, we have to be psychologically prepared for a surprise Republican victory in November. And you’ve also said resistance is critical. But what form should that resistance take? What should people have in the back of their minds as we go in to look at the results on election night Nov. 4th?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, you know, as to exactly what we can do in such a situation, I’m really not equipped to say, because we’re in uncharted territory. But I want to leave you with something much more specific that I’ve referred to before that your listeners absolutely must know about because it can do a great deal to prevent the theft of this election, actually, and in the event of a theft can strengthen the hand of those who say “no”.

What we now have coming out of Ohio is a revelation of immeasurable importance. We have the testimony of a whistleblower whose credentials are unimpeachable. This guy’s name, this expert witness, his name is Stephen Spoonamore. I say that he has unimpeachable credentials because, first of all, he is a conservative Republican. Second of all, he is a former McCain supporter. And third of all, he makes his living as a very prominent and highly successful expert on the detection of computer fraud. Spoonamore’s testimony is driving a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) lawsuit in Ohio. But the most important thing for people to know now, is that Spoonamore has named Karl Rove’s computer guru who has helped Rove to steal elections since 2000, when he helped with Florida. He helped with Ohio in 2004. He helped to steal Don Siegelman’s re-election victory as governor of Alabama in 2002. The evidence suggests that he helped with the theft of Sen. Max Cleland’s re-election in Georgia in 2002. (Michael) Connell is now working for the McCain campaign and we understand that they have a system in place that will allow them to steal the race in Ohio and five other swing states. And the game plan here is to use the process of discovery in this lawsuit so that we can get these people under oath, and on the record answering specific questions about their crimes. The fact is, that if people want to learn more about what Spoonamore has revealed, and if they want to donate to the legal war chest to enable the lawyers to push this thing to the max, they can go to a website. The URL is http://www.rovecybergate.com. People should go there immediately. They can watch some video interviews with Spoonamore. So I want to leave you tonight with this information because this is something that will really make a difference, but only if people pay attention to it and act on it as soon as possible.

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